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This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
disciplined essays in Kilroy Cafe.Also see my philophical blog and Twitter feed.

Issue #46, 12/13/2006

The Problem of Dependence

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

Once you have enough resources to serve your own needs, it
is natural to want to give to others. The only question is
how to do it effectively—to maximize the total good
from what little you can give. In simple economic terms, we
might want to contribute $1 million now in such a way as to
save society $100 million in the long run. If we decide to
be charitable with our money (or our time), then we ought to
accomplish the most we can with it.

Getting the maximum output from our charity requires some
form of force multiplication. This is a system that
amplifies the future effects of what we do now. Education
is generally seen as a force multiplier, as is children's
health care. If we invest a little on these early
interventions, we are usually saving society a lot more in
the long run. Instead of trying to deal with crime, drug
abuse or homelessness in adulthood, we will probably get
more "bang for our buck" by attacking the root cause of
these things in childhood.

There are complicating factors, however. One is that you
can't ignore current problems entirely without impacting
future results. If you fail address to drug abuse in
parents, then this is going to affect their children and
perhaps undo any advances you make in education or health
care. Everything is an integrated system, and you can't
overlook one social problem without influencing all of the
others.

Another complicating factor—perhaps the
biggest—is something I call dependence.
Whatever it is you give, the system tends to adjust to it and
expects you to keep giving. Soon, the system is dependent
on you; your total returns start decreasing, and you become
trapped into giving indefinitely. This is the single most
difficult dilemma in any kind of charitable
intervention—from feeding the pigeons to raising
children to toppling a dictator.

Dependence is inherent in any charitable intervention.
Let's say the Gates Foundation gives a grant to a backward,
under-funded school system (like, say, Clark County's) to
buy computers for classrooms. It sounds like a noble
effort, right? But then the School Board says, "Hey, we
don't have to worry about computers anymore," and obviously
they won't fund it themselves. Propped up by the Gates
Foundation, the school system might have less motivation to
pursue local funding sources, and it seems to be doing
better than it is. Over time, the Gates contribution becomes
expected; more public money is used for roads instead of
education, and the net effect of the giving may be zero.

No charity or government agency wants to be caught in a
situation where they are dumping endless resources into a
problem and getting nowhere. Unfortunately, this is the end
point of many a noble effort. You help someone, and they are
grateful at first, but then they come to expect your help;
their gratefulness and initiative fades, and pretty soon,
you're giving, giving, giving and getting nothing in return.

It's a natty problem requiring constant vigilance and
creativity. You want to improve people's lives, but you
don't want to create dependence. To achieve this, you may
have to go into a sort of combat mode that isn't always
friendly. You'll let them suckle on the teat for only so
long before you have to cruelly push them away.

Raw charity is when we see an emotional need and
immediately respond to it. People are hungry, so we feed
them. Unfortunately, the unintended effect may be that
people become dependent on our food. Having found a
reliable source of it, they may be less likely to seek it on
their own. Raw charity always has a high dependency
danger. For this reason, it should not be pleasant at
the receiving end. If a Salvation Army soup kitchen were
made as comfortable as a shopping mall food court, then no
one would ever want to leave. There has to be some
roughness to it.

Likewise, you wouldn't want state intervention to be
particularly pleasant when, say, a child is taken from their
parents because of the parents' drug abuse. We'll try to give
parents the services they need to get off drugs, and we will
adequately care for the children in the meantime, but no
one, including the children, should be coddled or pampered.
Otherwise, the transition back to self-sufficiency will be
impossible.

You have to shelve any utopian plans for creating perfect
families (like the Myrna
Torme Williams Complex). The most that any intervention
can hope for is to relieve a specifically targeted problem,
like the drug abuse. Inevitably, any child welfare system
will be returning some children to parents who remain grossly
inadequate. Any other solution would risk dependence and
exceed the state's resources.

Any charitable activity is like going to war: You not only
need a plan for winning the battle; you also need an exit
strategy. People tend to forget about this when they give
generous gifts or volunteer for something: How do I get out?
The Gates Foundation needs to consider this, and so do each
of us whenever we decide to play Santa. What sort of
expectations are you creating with your gift? How are you
disrupting the natural ecology of the social environment?

Think of how the world got into the ecological mess it is
now in—nearly seven billion people and growing. This
all arose out of good intentions, by bringing modern
medicine and food production to "primitive" parts of the
world. "Saving lives" ultimately turned into condemning far
more lives to a living hell.

Every silver cloud has a potential dark lining, and if you
ever hope to help the world, you must always be aware of it.